Colombia in 2012

Area:

1,141,748 sq km (440,831 sq mi)

Population

(2012 est.): 45,239,000

Capital:

Bogotá

Head of state and government:

President Juan Manuel Santos

Despite the performance of Colombian athletes at the Olympic Games in London (the best in Colombia’s Olympic history), public attention was primarily focused on judicial politics during 2012. The particularly violent deaths in Bogotá of young mother Rosa Elvira Cely in May 2012 and student Luis Andrés Colmenares in October 2010 generated an unusual amount of scrutiny in a country with one of the highest, if falling, homicide rates in the region. Both cases were carefully followed by the Office of the Attorney General, despite the uncertainty created by the resignation of Viviane Morales, who, as attorney general, had overseen many high-profile cases (including that of former peace commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, who fled the country after being charged with having faked the demobilization of a guerrilla unit). Morales had been forced to resign because of a procedural error made by the Supreme Court at the time of her appointment.

Morales’s successor, Eduardo Montealegre, confronted additional challenges in unrelated cases, as the veracity of some of the government’s key witnesses was called into question. Perhaps the most notorious case involving false testimony was that of former regional assembly member Sigifredo López, who was accused of having aided the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in his own kidnapping, along with that of 11 of his fellow assembly members, in 2002. López was the only survivor when the captives were later massacred as the guerrillas mistook their own troops for a rescue party. After several months of incarceration, he was released when it was determined that the evidence brought against him did not support the prosecution’s case.

A government attempt to constitutionally reform the country’s judicial system met with public outcry when a congressional conference committee’s modification to the legislation attempted to shield members of both Congress and the judiciary from further criminal investigation. The reform amendment was struck down by Congress—though its authority to do so was unclear—but only after Pres. Juan Manuel Santos vetoed the bill. The discontent generated by the episode further harmed the reputation of an already delegitimized Congress, but it also took its toll on the president’s popularity, which generally had been declining since 2010 and reached a low of 45% in 2012.

Despite the perception of many Colombians that their economic welfare and security were deteriorating, in reality the country performed well in macroeconomic terms in 2012, with slightly lower inflation than the previous year and GDP growth of 4.8% that made Colombia’s economy the second largest on the continent. In matters of security, however, popular perceptions were mostly correct. The FARC and BACRIM (“emergent criminal bands” with origins in disbanded right-wing paramilitary groups) both escalated attacks. In particularly hard-hit Cauca, members of the region’s indigenous communities sought to forcefully evict the military from their lands. Attacks against important infrastructure, illegal roadblocks, and skirmishes with remote police stations occurred with increasing frequency. Colombians were reminded of the worst of times when a bomb targeted at former minister of interior Fernando Londoño exploded in the middle of a busy street in Bogotá, wounding about 50 people and killing two members of the former minister’s security detail.

Despite signs of deterioration, important steps were taken toward turning the page on Colombia’s long-standing armed conflict. The FARC announced that it would no longer engage in kidnapping for extortion and unilaterally freed the last members of the army and police forces it held (though nothing was said about its many civilian hostages). Most important, for the third time in the history of Colombia’s armed confrontation, the government initiated direct peace negotiations with the FARC—one of the world’s oldest guerrilla groups. Addressing the UN General Assembly, Santos (who had undergone initial surgical treatment for prostate cancer in early October) said that he remained “cautiously optimistic” about the peace talks, which began in Oslo and continued in Havana in November, prior to which the FARC declared a unilateral two-month cease-fire. Initiation of the talks, which were adamantly opposed by ever-popular former president Álvaro Uribe, led Santos’s popularity to spike to roughly 60%—an indication perhaps of how much Colombians yearned for their country to be, finally, at peace.